Apocalypse and Highest in The Room in keygrams
Here I made two keygrams about the song ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Highest In The Room’. These are the only two songs that appear in both our playlists. Because those songs are both very different but they do appear in both our playslists, it might be interesting to work this out. In the timbre and chroma self-similarity matrixes on the other page, it becomes clear that there is a more structered pattern in Highest in The Room than in Apocalypse. I also see this in the keygrams.
In Highest in The Room, there is a clear difference between couplets and refrains and around 150 seconds, it changes to something else. I don’t know if the kegram is correct because the song in in D minor and the most common chords are Dm and Am. In the keygram the Dm is very dark but the Am isn’t.
In the keygram of Apocalypse, there is a vague pattern that continues trough the whole song. Also, this keygram is much darker than that of the other song. This song is in F major but I don’t really see this. I do see that Dm is very dark and this is a common chords in this song.
In both the keygrams there are things that are expected in the key, but also a lot of onexpected things. But if I compare these two keygrams, they have a lot in common, like the C#min, Dmin and Dmaj. And if I look at the chords of the two songs, there are also a few similarities. Like the Dm, Am, Bb and Gm.
Pien versus Pim
For my corpus, I would like to compare my Spotify Wrapped playlist of 2019 to the one of my boyfriend, Pim. Our taste in music is very different and those lists are representing this difference. I think it’s interesting to compare these two playlists. I’m more into soft pop music, singer-/songwriters, also a little classical music, film music, etc. And Pim is more into Drum & Bass, Rap, Hiphop, etc. But we appreciate each others taste of music increasingly since we’ve been together. For a research question I would think of how different our music tastes really are. At first glance, they are very different. But maybe there are some underlying similarities. And what those differenses and similarities mean.
Pim is dancing a lot more
I have some first findings, measured by Spotify, that are interesting: The music that Pim listens to is more danceable (M = 0.72, SD = 0.13) than the music I listen to (M = 0.48, SD = 0.19). Also there is a difference in energy. Pim’s playlist is way more energetic (M = 0.68, SD = 0.18) than mine (M = 0.34, SD = 0.25). If we look at the loudness category, Pim’s playlist is louder (M = -6.72, SD = 2.41) than mine (M = -14.1, SD = 8.79). In the figure below, we can see the differences that I discussed above. In Pim’s figure, almost all of the points/dots are on the top right. This means, that the the energy and danceability is very high. The loudness is indicated with the size of the points/dots. In my figure, the points/dots are more spread out. But almost all the points/dots are very small. So in the size (loudness), Pim is more diverse. And my figure is more stable. Which is a little strange because my standard deviation is a lot bigger than Pim’s. To make this more clear, I made a figure of the loudness.
To understand the difference in Loudness, I made a nice figure.
In the figure we see that Pim is more specific and I am more diverse and stable. This makes more sense. My standard deviation of loudness is large because I listen to more different types of music. A reason for this could be that I have to listen a lot of music for my study, musicology. And this is especially classical music.
Our similarities!
This table shows us a summery of all the Spotify features. In the previous tab I discussed the difference in Danceability, Energy and Loudness. If we look at the Acousticness, there is also a quit large difference.
But there are also similarities like the Keys of our playlists. If we look at the results of Pim in this category, it would mean in the pitch class: F/F#. My results for Key would mean in pitch class: E/F.
Also the modes are close to each other. In the table we see that Pim en I both listen to major, minor and everything in between.
Apparently, Pim en I are both not really into cheerful music. We score pretty low on Valence, especially I am. But I didn’t expect that Pim would be pretty close.
The results of speechiness seems a little extreme to me. Despite the fact that Pim listens to rap, the results are very low. I would expect that the results of the speechiness in Pim’s playlist would be between 0.33 and 0.66. I don’t think I have to exclude this because it might be an interesting thing to investigate more.
| Danceability | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.72 | 0.13 |
| Pien | 0.48 | 0.19 |
| Energy | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.68 | 0.18 |
| Pien | 0.34 | 0.25 |
| Loudness | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | -6.72 | 2.41 |
| Pien | -14.1 | 8.79 |
| Acousticness | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.13 | 0.19 |
| Pien | 0.63 | 0.36 |
| Key | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 5.43 | 3.74 |
| Pien | 4.54 | 3.35 |
| Mode | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.53 | 0.50 |
| Pien | 0.57 | 0.49 |
| Speechiness | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.14 | 0.11 |
| Pien | 0.06 | 0.06 |
| Valence | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.40 | 0.24 |
| Pien | 0.26 | 0.19 |
| Liveness | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 0.18 | 0.12 |
| Pien | 0.16 | 0.14 |
| Tempo | Mean | SD |
|---|---|---|
| Pim | 129 | 30.8 |
| Pien | 113 | 32.2 |
Apocalypse and Highest In The Room in a chromagram
There are only two songs that appear in both our playlists. Those songs are Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex and Highest In The Room by Travis Scott. These songs are very very different. That’s why I have put them together in a chromagram.
The Timbre and Chroma in Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex and Highest In The Room by Travis Scott.
There are only two songs that appear in both our playlists: Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex and Highest In The Room by Travis Scott. These songs are very different in genre. Apocalypse is slow pop and Highest In The Room is hiphop. So it could be interesting to look at the differences in the self-similarity matrixes. In Apocalypse, there is structure in the pattern but also some differences. In the vocal part, there are some little changes and variations but the instrumental part is more like a river, it continues. I think that you can see that in both the visualizations timbre and chroma between 100 and 200. There is a part of the pattern that continous but also a part that changes. In the visualization of Highest In The Room, there is a clear checkerborard pattern in the beginning but after two-thirds of the song, there is a big change. It becomes instrumental till the end of the song. You can see this in the timbre visualization between 100 and 150. The checkerboard pattern dissapears.
Apocalypse and Highest in The Room in keygrams
Here I made two keygrams about the song ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Highest In The Room’. These are the only two songs that appear in both our playlists. Because those songs are both very different but they do appear in both our playslists, it might be interesting to work this out. In the timbre and chroma self-similarity matrixes on the other page, it becomes clear that there is a more structered pattern in Highest in The Room than in Apocalypse. I also see this in the keygrams.
In Highest in The Room, there is a clear difference between couplets and refrains and around 150 seconds, it changes to something else. I don’t know if the kegram is correct because the song in in D minor and the most common chords are Dm and Am. In the keygram the Dm is very dark but the Am isn’t.
In the keygram of Apocalypse, there is a vague pattern that continues trough the whole song. Also, this keygram is much darker than that of the other song. This song is in F major but I don’t really see this. I do see that Dm is very dark and this is a common chords in this song.
In both the keygrams there are things that are expected in the key, but also a lot of onexpected things. But if I compare these two keygrams, they have a lot in common, like the C#min, Dmin and Dmaj. And if I look at the chords of the two songs, there are also a few similarities. Like the Dm, Am, Bb and Gm.
Tempograms
For the tempograms, I picked again the two songs that appear in both our playlists. Because these two songs are so different, I chose to work these two out. Also, because I can tell a clear story when I use the same songs over again. And maybe I can come to a conclusion why these two particular songs are the only two that are in both of our playlists.
So, I looked at the timbre and keys of the songs. Now I’m going to look at the tempo in those songs. In tempo, these songs differs the most. You can see in the tempograms, that Highest In The Room by Travis Scott scores really high in tempo. It is almost the whole song about 155 BPM and sometimes it even reaches the 160 BPM.